| Monsieur Vincent Van Gogh, a Dutchman banging around France in the later part of the 19th Century, was a man possessed. He fought and struggled with his own private demons and in the process created an amazing body of master pieces that were unique in his time and unique in ours, 100 years later. No artist has given as much or suffered as much. He came to believe that painting would be his salvation and that through continual dedication to his craft he could keep the dogs of madness away. |  |
After a series of encounters with locals and with fellow artists who could not cope with his wild rantings and explosive behaviour, Vincent interned himself into the small Cloister St Paul de Mausole, just a short distance outside Remy de Provence in the South of France. For the year between May 1989 to May 1890, he was trapped there and 'treated'. This consisted of 2 hour baths, twice a week and not much else. He was fed extremely poorly - just bread and soup, he was often confined. A few months after leaving this place he was dead. During that year he produced over 150 major paintings, that's about 1 every few days, and as is often noted, he hardly sold any work while still alive. It's mind boggling to think of the value we place on that year's work today - over 12 billion dollars.
I wandered around the cloister with Karol and we were both touched by it's calm beauty and palpable sadness. You don't want to raise your voice or play a lark here. The memory of Vincent hangs in the air. You look at his rooms, his bed, his views from the windows and you see images of his paintings come into focus. I look and see how he rearranged what he saw to make great and powerfully simple compositions. Architectural detail stripped back, rooms shrunk or elongated. Beds magically filling up impossible spaces. Outside I can see the wheat field inside the cloister walls. I can see past it to distant mountains that, in his paintings, he brought closer and closer to that wall so that they seem to dance above it.
I wandered around the cloister with Karol and we were both touched by it's calm beauty and palpable sadness. You don't want to raise your voice or play a lark here. The memory of Vincent hangs in the air. You look at his rooms, his bed, his views from the windows and you see images of his paintings come into focus. I look and see how he rearranged what he saw to make great and powerfully simple compositions. Architectural detail stripped back, rooms shrunk or elongated. Beds magically filling up impossible spaces. Outside I can see the wheat field inside the cloister walls. I can see past it to distant mountains that, in his paintings, he brought closer and closer to that wall so that they seem to dance above it.
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Ah Vincent mate, what a thing that you did. You impossibly rearranged the way artists have seen the world and how all people can see and feel an image by it's colour, it's dynamic movement, it's texture, it's naivety, it's subtle sophisticated perfection. Thanks mate and so sorry that the stupids locked you away and made you suffer even more.
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